


One Of Those Days

by iwillalwaysknowyou



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, evil space consortium!, exasperating teenagers, snark in space, snarky AIs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29334705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillalwaysknowyou/pseuds/iwillalwaysknowyou
Summary: Hawk sighed and shook her head. “Here’s the thing, kid. I’m not a nanny.”'Yeah?" The spiky-haired stowaway glared at her. "Well here’s the other thing, lady: I’m not a kid.”“I am unfamiliar with human vernacular,” said Indie, “but I believe ‘the thing’ we ought all focus on is that there are four bombers coming withing striking range of us.”The discover of a stowaway in her hold makes a Consortium cargo pilot's basic supply run a lot more complicated.
Relationships: Female Cargo Ship Pilot & Cranky Young Stowaway Trying To Escape Homeplanet
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	One Of Those Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosabelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosabelle/gifts).



> :-D

Motion sensor alarms in the cargo hold usually meant that Hawk had unwittingly picked up a stray rodent. A rare occurrence—she scanned every supply crate and box she loaded, because having desiccated rat bodies drop out mid-delivery wasn’t exactly a great reputation-builder—but the occasional critter eluded her precautions.

However, the critters were never quite this large.

Or bipedal.

Or wearing fluffy, fuchsia coats, and a startled scowl on their half-frozen eyebrows.

“Don’t shoot me,” squeaked the girl, eyeing Hawk’s zap-rod warily. In the white light of the halo-lantern, her bruised eyes shone with the artificial amber glint of exo-skin.

That explained why Indie’s cargo-scan hadn’t picked her up. The nano-film Earth-dwellers used to shield themselves from space-rays blocked most scans. Fancier ships, like luxury leisure cruise-lines or political island-ships employed new-generation scanners that went by molecular displacement and couldn’t be tricked by exo-skins. Hawk couldn’t afford a scanner so fancy.

That hadn’t been a problem, because no one with enough money to afford exo-skin would try to stow away on her dingy cargo vessel.

Until now.

“ _Warning_ ,” came Indie’s voice through the comm-set. “ _Extended exposure to cargo hold environment may lead to undesirable health effects_.”

Right. There was a reason the hold was for transporting materials, not people. 

Hawk jerked the hand holding her halo-lantern toward the top hatch. “Move,” she told the amber-eyed stowaway. “Up to the cabin. And if you try something, I’ll zap you with my rodent stick.”

It probably wouldn’t kill a human—nor would Hawk murder a child in cold blood—but she decided the situation called for a little intimidation.

The girl scrambled up the hatch without protest, and she took refuge in the farthest corner of the pilot cabin.

Since Indie was, on paper at least, a Piercing Needle—the smallest type of spacefaring craft that could travel independently—the farthest corner of the pilot cabin was about ten feet from the nearest corner.

“ _Captain_ ,” said Indie, and only someone who'd known her for a decade could’ve discerned the humor in her dry, artificially-generated voice. “ _Unregistered passenger alert in the main cabin_.”

“Thanks ever so,” grumbled Hawk.

She studied the scowling girl pressed against the bulwark. She’d pushed off the hood of her ridiculous fluffy coat (Earth fashions became ever more ridiculous), revealing a tuft of black, spiky hair over a tall forehead. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen.

Hawk fought the urge to throw up her arms. What was she supposed to do with a kid?

“Indie, how far from Earth are we? Calculate the cost of returning to drop off our surprise passenger.”

“You can’t!” gasped the kid. She took a step toward Hawk, then scuttled back as the zap-rod waved in her direction. “You can’t take me back!”

“Watch me. Indie?”

“ _We are three thousand, four hundred and twelve hecto-klicks from Lunar Supply Station Eight. The fuel cost to return then re-achieve our current position would be two hundred and eighteen credits. The estimated time cost is ninety-four minutes. The additional oxygen and heating cost would be thirty-four credits._ ”

“Thanks.” Hawk narrowed her eyes at the girl. “There better be someone back on that station who can reimburse me for my trouble.”

“There isn’t! So it’ll cost you more to get rid of me than keep me.”

Hawk snorted. The kid was clueless.

“Indie, what’s the estimated cost of extra oxygen, heat, fuel, and food for an additional occupant from here to Titan Station?”

“I’ll pay you,” the girl blurted. “I have money!”

“I’m not a passenger ship. You can use your money to purchase a proper cruise ticket. After you cover my incurred expenses for returning you.”

“You can’t return me to Earth!”

“You keep saying that word, ‘can’t’. Indie, who’s the pilot here?”

“ _You are, Captain Hawkgard_.”

“Funny, that. And who makes the decisions on this ship?”

Indie hesitated infinitesimally, to let Hawk know that _technically_ , they both had input into the decisions. But the girl wouldn’t catch the hesitation, and Indie was too clever to ruin Hawk’s demonstration.

“ _You do, Captain_.”

“And Indie, if I tell you to turn this ship around toward Lunar Station Eight, and as soon as we reach safe orbit, stuff our stowaway into an evac capsule and shoot her at Luna’s surface, is that something I can do?”

“ _It is, Captain_.”

Hawk leaned against the nav console, crossing her arms. “What do you know, kid. Turns out I can do whatever the hell I want.”

She waited a moment for further protest, but the girl seemed to have only tooth-gritting, silent rage left. Good. Silent was good.

“Indie, turn around, please—”

“No! Please!” The girl threw herself at Hawk. She was lucky Hawk’s brain quickly adjusted from imminent-danger-break-assailant’s-neck to low-danger-break-assailant’s-hold.

The girl gasped as Hawk flipped her over one hip and sent her tumbling to the floor. The metal rattled from the impact.

Hawk rested the tip of the zap-rod against the kid’s neck. And mentally swore a lot.

Then mentally swore a lot more, as the girl’s face scrunched up into what looked concerningly like crying.

“Please,” sobbed the girl. “I need to get to Titan Station. I’ll give you anything. I’ll work for my keep, I’ll—I’ll polish your cabin or cook or whatever you need! And when we get to Titan Station, I can arrange to transfer you ten times my passenger cost! Please don’t send me back!”

Hawk stared down at her.

It wasn’t that crying children _impressed_ her, exactly.

But she’d never had to deal with this, before. And plainly any girl rich enough to afford exo-skin and wacky-fluffy fashions and claim thousands of credits to her name would’ve had to be either very bored or very desperate to stow away onto the dingiest-looking supply ship in all twelve Lunar ports.

“Why do you want to go to Titan Station?” she asked. And of course, the girl’s mouth clamped shut and her jaw tightened stubbornly.

Right.

“Cool,” said Hawk. “Indie, plot a return course—”

“I need to find my mom!” spat the girl. “Okay?! She’s—she lives at Titan Station, and I need to go live with her. Immediately. She’ll pay you! She’s…she’s a harvest engineer on Titan. She’s got enough credits.”

Hawk bit her lips, hesitating.

People lied. Teenagers in particular; Hawk herself couldn’t remember many scruples about telling lies as a youth.

But usually there was grain of truth in the lies, and this girl did look particularly desperate to get away from Earth. And in Hawk’s experience, desperate teenagers with haunted eyes deserved at least to be listened to.

“If your mother lives on Titan, why were you on Earth? Particularly at one of the lunar stations?” Luna housed only transport hubs and reclamation facilities, and boasted few permanent residents save for facility and maintenance staff, and a handful of Consortium transport and customs officers.

“I caught a shuttlebus from Oceania,” muttered the girl. “Where I live with my dad. But I don’t want to live with him anymore, so I’m going to stay with mom.”

Great.

Hawk had ended up in the middle of a custody dispute.

At least the Oceania story rang true. The luxury Earth habitat was precisely the sort of place where people got exo-skins and weird hairdos for fun. And the girl did have a fancy upper-crust accent, like the Consortium President and her cronies. One didn’t usually those her hoity-toity tones outside of Oceania, or maybe the high-end island-vessels that orbited Mars.

“Why do you want to leave your dad? Don’t lie,” Hawk warned. “I can tell, and if you spill a sob story that you think is going to soften me, I’ll end this little chat and fly you right back to Oceania. Hell—at least I know they’ll be afford my reimbursement expenses.”

She shook her head. She avoided dealings with the Consortium’s upper echelon, whenever possible, but there was no denying she could use their money.

Except she wasn’t done listening to the desperate teenager.

“Just give me the truth.” She stepped back, moving the zap-rod so the girl could sit up. “I don’t care how weird, embarrassing, stupid, or tragic it is. I just want the real answer—why are you running away?”

The girl stared at her. The amber in her eyes was fading. Exo-skins usually disintegrated after about twelve hours—so she wouldn’t have run away from home too long ago.

Hawk briefly admired the gumption of a teenager who could get from Oceania to a dingy supply vessel escaping Earth within the span of half a day. 

“He’s not letting me contact mom,” the girl whispered. “I—I want to talk to her, but dad says I’m not allowed to. I wanted to live with her from the start, but they said Titan Station’s too dangerous, and I was _better off_ ,” (she spat the words with particular venom), “on stupid Oceania, where all I’m allowed to do is education-virtuals and Consortium entertainment trips and stupid Teen Lead broadcasts.”

“Sounds like torture,” deadpanned Hawk.

“You don’t get it!” The girl clenched her fists. “I don’t want any of that! I just—I want to be with mom. And he’ll never let me see her, and if I don’t go now—she’ll—I’ll never—”

To Hawk’s chagrin, the girl’s voice cracked, and she choked out a sob, tears spilling from her eyes.

Good spacefaring heavens.

She marched to the supply cabinet and pulled out a box of sterile sealant bandages, which was the closest thing she had to tissues or handkerchiefs. Cargo vessel pilots didn’t exactly spend a lot of time crying.

The girl yanked the proffered bandage and belligerently blew her nose, while Hawk leaned against the bullhead, sighing.

She couldn’t afford a passenger. Her oxygen, food, and energy supplies were limited, and even if the kid’s mom _was_ an engineer on Titan (and Hawk suspected she was more likely a harvest settler, with barely any income), she’d be under no obligation to pay up. 

She also couldn’t risk a passenger. There was a reason Hawk worked alone and never allowed anyone onboard Indie. Even typical docking station maintenance staff was allowed only basic scans. Twelve days with a curious teenager spelled disaster.

Also, she didn’t _want_ a passenger.

She’d briefly considered making an exception if the girl was escaping danger. But this sounded more like a family drama, and Hawk did not need that kind of trouble. Especially since anyone who lived on Oceania could give her _a lot_ of trouble.

She sighed again, shaking her head. “Here’s the thing, kid. I’m not a nanny.”

The spiky-haired stowaway glared. “Yeah? Well here’s the other thing, lady: I’m not a kid.”

“ _I am unfamiliar with human vernacular_ ,” said Indie, “ _but I believe ‘the thing’ we ought all focus on is that there are four bombers coming withing striking range of us_.”

Four—what?!

Hawk threw herself into the pilot’s seat. “Display!” Sure enough, four blinking dots sat superimposed on the basic proximity map of the sector. Each dot was helpfully labeled CAV5—or Consortium Assault Vessel, type 5, their smallest kind of bomber.

What the hell. 

“Indie, pick up the speed. Let’s try to lose them. And randomize our trajectory once we get out of their sensor range.”

“ _Acknowledged_.”

Hawk bit back a swear, rounding on the girl.

“Why,” she ground out, with an effort to keep from screaming, “are there bombers after you?”

“There aren’t!” squeaked the girl, and Hawk erupted from her seat and lifted her up by the arms, planting her none-too-gently into the copilot chair and looming over her, menacingly.

“I want the truth!”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes, you do!” Hawk snarled. “I’ve had enough of this. Tell me why you’re here and why the Consortium wants you so badly they sent an honor guard—and gods help me, if a lie passes your lips, I’ll toss you in an evac capsule and shoot you into space right now! They can retrieve you and I’ll be on my way.”

The girl’s wide, terrified eyes stared into hers. Without the exo-skin, they were a greenish sort of hazel.

“It won’t help,” she whimpered. “Even if you let them have me…they’ll never let you reach Titan.”

Chills ran down Hawk’s spine.

“And why is that?”

“Because they’ll think I told you. That—that I gave it to you.” The girl wiggled, and Hawk pulled back to let her reach into the pocket of her ridiculous, fluffy coat.

She produced a small data crystal, holding it up in a shaky hand.

Hawk snatched the crystal. Her first instinct was to shove it into Indie's data readers But the Consortium tended to load their data-containers with all sorts of nasty things, to prevent unauthorized access.

“What’s this?” she asked, instead. “Why would they kill for this?”

A stupid question, really; the Consortium would kill for anything.

“There’s—there’s an invasion fleet, coming this way," gasped the girl. "The Consortium Defense Fleet…” Her lower lip shook, and tears began flowing again. “They’re going to blow up all the periphery stations! Use them to make a debris barrier that’ll cripple the invaders—but everyone on those stations will die! My mom, too!”

She sobbed, while Hawk stared at her in shock.

“When I overhead Dad talking to Consortium Defense, I tried to warn mom. But he caught me, and—and I haven’t been able to contact her since! Please! We only have a few days to save them—we have to warn them!”

“There are twenty-six periphery stations around the edges of the solar system,” said Hawk, quietly. “A hundred thousand occupants, between them. Are you telling me the Consortium is planning to kill them all?”

“It’s cheaper,” the girl whispered. “That’s what Dad said on the call to Defense. Sending in Consortium vessels will cost time and money and crew lives—but the periphery stations are easier to rebuild, and they don’t need to use sturdy materials. He…he said he’d done the math. And the math said my mom should die, along with everyone else on those stations!”

Hawk’s jaw began to hurt, and she realized she was gritting her teeth.

Of course Consortium math would work that way.

She sat back into the pilot’s seat, strapping in. “Indie, did you catch all that?”

“ _Yes, Captain_.” Indie’s automodulated voice held a faint note of tension.

“Send a broadband recording of the last minute of that conversation to every receiving station in range, please. How fast can we make Titan Station, if we go full speed?”

Indie hesitated infinitesimally again, so Hawk rephrased:

“Engine full speed.” Better try the safe option, first.

“ _Ten days, four hours, nineteen minutes_.”

Hawk glanced to the girl. “Strap in,” she told her. “Road might get bumpy. How long before the Consortium implements their plan? And how do they intend to do it?”

“I don’t know.” The girl shook her head. “It’s all on that data crystal…I think. I took it from Dad’s personal reader. But I didn’t have time to read it.”

“Take a guess,” said Hawk impatiently. “I need a timeline, girl. Two months, two weeks, two hours?”

“Weeks. Days. I don’t know—when I overhead Dad, he was just proposing his plan to Consortium Defense. The higher-ups would have to approve it, and he said it would take some sort of alignment to work best…”

Hawk swore. “The concentric alignment.”

So much for her hope that the girl was wrong. This information was too precise to be anything but real.

“When the Consortium built all their periphery stations,” she explained, “they placed them in specific locations so they’d periodically line up to create a multi-layered chain around the inner solar system. Like a defense grid.”

Of course, it had never occurred to Hawk that the defense grid was really just a mine field. Ready to be blown up at any time.

“Twice a year, the stations align in a concentric fashion that’s particularly effective as a barrier against entry from the outside. Indie, when’s the next concentric alignment?”

“ _Nine days, nineteen hours, thirty-one minutes_.”

Less than their travel time at full speed.

The girl gasped. “No! We have to make it on time!”

“Quiet.” Hawk stared at her navigation display, thinking hard. “Indie, how’s our message going?”

“ _All our broadcast frequencies have been jammed. I am attempting to circumvent the jamming algorithms, but I have not yet been able to transmit the message_.”

“So, no warning them,” murmured Hawk.

“We have to--!”

“Shh.” She bit her lips, ignoring the girl’s pleas. Indie might eventually work around the jammers to broadcast, but there was no guarantee their broadcast wouldn’t be intercepted and dispersed further down the line…

“ _Additional Consortium vessels converging on our location_ ,” said Indie. “ _It appears our decal and engine signature are being circulated in the sector as ‘potentially dangerous, hold for questioning’._ ”

“Well, at least it’s not ‘destroy on sight’,” muttered Hawk. “Which I assume is thanks to our precious stowaway...Oh, damn it.”

She craned her neck to watch the girl, who was staring back with a look of terror.

“Girl—what’s your name?”

“Sienna.”

“Last name.” What kind of name was Sienna, anyway? Wasn’t that a color? “Actually, what I really want to know is who your father is. Given the sort of information risk you pose, a regular Consortium director wouldn’t have the clout to keep those bombers from killing us. So…how high up in the ranks is he, exactly?”

The girl bit her chapped lips.

“Munsen,” she whispered. “It’s Sienna Munsen.”

Hawk resisted the urge to bang her head against the navigation console.

“The chief Consortium financier.” Of course. “Well—no wonder they’re not shooting us down.”

Hyeronimous Munsen wasn’t precisely the top-top Consortium level, but he was certainly within the top ten. And since he held the near-infinite purse strings, it was no surprise the Civilian Fleet didn’t want to blow up his daughter.

“ _Sixteen Consortium Assault Vessels coming within range_ ,” the AI warned.

“Try to evade them a second longer, Indie.” Hawk turned in her chair again. “Sienna, I’m going to try to warn the periphery stations. But it’ll be dangerous, and if I step too much on the Consortium Defense’s tail, I’m not sure even your dad will be able to keep their fleet from firing on my ship. So I want you to take a second and think if you’d not rather get into that evac capsule—”

“No!”

“—and let the nice friendly bombers pick you up and return you to your dad—”

“No!!”

“—where at least no one will try to blow you up.”

“No,” said the girl a third time. “I’m never going back to him. Besides, what if the periphery stations don’t believe your warning? You’ll need me as witness.”

Compelling point. Although… “I’m not sure they’ll believe you, either, to be honest.”

“Mom will,” said Sienna. “And the others will believe her. She’s the commander of Titan Station.”

“The—of course she is.” Hawk rolled her eyes. This kid had some pedigree.

She tapped a few commands on the display, and examined the depressingly-busy map of incoming CAVs.

“Just for the record,” she told Sienna, “I wish you’d picked another ship to stow away on.”

“I thought they wouldn’t look for me on such a derelict bucket of bolts.”

“ _Captain, safety protocols recommend removing stowaways to the brig_ ,” Indie put in, conversationally.

Hawk snorted. “We don’t have a brig.”

“ _I can repurpose the waste-disposal closet, if necessary._ ”

Hawk laughed out loud.

“Noted. Sienna, I’d apologize to Indie. She doesn’t like being insulted.”

“Sorry,” grumbled the girl. “Why’d you get an AI with emotions, anyway? They were made obsolete like thirty years ago, ‘cause they all kept malfunctioning—ow! Hey! The chair’s—ow!—shocking me! Ow!”

“ _Apologies_ ,” said Indie, neutrally. “ _The seat stabilizers seem to have experienced a momentary electric surge_.”

“Not to ruin your enjoyment,” said Hawk, “but I’m not sure we can avoid those CAVs for much longer.” Already, the sensors were showing explosions nearby. The bombers were trying to herd her ship into a corner. “Are we in a good position for a fold?”

“ _At our current coordinates, we may safely attempt a low-radius fold_ ,” said Indie. “ _Plotting optimal trajectory_.”

“What’s a fold?” asked Sienna, and Hawk bit her lips.

Twenty years hiding the secret, and she was about to blow it wide open.

“Indie, are you on board with this?”

“ _Technically_ ,” said Indie, “ _I am not_ on _board, so much as I_ am _the…board_.”

“Your grasp of human idioms is unparalleled. Are you alright with doing this or not? If we fold here, those CAV sensors will pick it up, and that’ll be that for our nice, quiet cargo-hauling business.”

“ _I never wanted to be a cargo-vessel in the first place_ ,” said Indie. “ _I like adventure._ ”

“So, that’s a yes?”

“ _Fold away, Captain_.”

“What’s a fold?” Sienna asked again, and Hawk grinned.

“You’re about to see.” She swiped the display screen, zooming in on Indie’s plotted trajectory. “Count down, please.”

“ _Countdown to optimal fold initiation_ ,” said Indie. “ _Five, four, three, two, one. Initiate_.”

It was a familiar sensation. A tug behind Hawk’s navel, a funny tingle in her sinuses, and the unmistakable sensation of stretching and rolling and _flattening_ across space, like a sheet of Earth pizza dough tossed in the air.

Her ears popped. Her eyes, rather than the pilot’s cabin, showed her an expanse of blackness, streaked by moving stars, yellow and red and blue and white, some of them long gone, others only now born. A fracture song thrummed deep in Hawk’s breastbone. A song she always yearned to hear in full, but one she could never reproduce, or even remember, outside these brief moments.

She felt her world yanked one way, then another, then many ways at once, and Indie’s distorted voice reached her in the middle of the strange stretch. Hawk didn’t understand the words, but she knew their meaning, by now.

 _Unfold_.

She snapped back into herself, lights still dancing before her eyes.

Her body felt too elastic still, like her bones craved to stretch across the space between stars. But the sensation faded quickly.

“ _Physiological readings within normal parameters_ ,” said Indie. “ _Fold successful. We are four thousand hecta-klicks from our previous location._ ”

Perfect.

Hawk craned her neck, glancing to their passenger. The girl’s face had acquired a slight greenish tint.

“ _What_ ,” she breathed, hoarsely, “was that?”

At least she wasn’t throwing up—as Hawk had, the first few dozen times she’d tried this. Of course, the girl was a few years older now than Hawk had been, and she wasn’t the one in the pilot seat.

Hawk turned her chair, a little. Craning her neck hurt.

“Indie, any CAVs nearby? And what’s our time to Titan Station?”

“ _No CAVs within sensor range. And our estimated travel time at full speed is eight days, nineteen hours, twelve minutes.”_

“Leaving us a whole day before concentric alignment. Good.”

Sienna’s jaw dropped. “Wha—how? We were just—you can’t—how did we gain three days?! And no one can travel four thousand hecto-klicks in a blink!”

Hawk felt a flutter of smugness. Showing off after all the years of secrecy was unexpectedly fun.

“Did you happen to read Indie’s decal, before you stowed away in our cargo hold?”

“The ship name?” The girl sounded confused. “Yeah, obviously. I had to check which ships were going to Titan Station. Her name’s _The Independent Tadpole.._. Weird name, by the way, for a cargo—ow! Don’t shock me!”

“Did you ever see tadpoles move?” asked Hawk. “They drift slowly in one direction, then they’ll suddenly get a burst of speed in a completely random direction. In fact, they’re one of few creatures whose pattern of locomotion resembles a random walk.”

“Thanks for the biology lesson. What’s your point?”

“Long ago, before people were able to better understand tadpole movements, a little-known naturalist named Giotto Ranelli suggested that perhaps tadpoles were able to fold time around themselves while they move. So that to an observer, they’d seem to suddenly speed up unnaturally.”

“…your ship can fold time?”

“Not exactly.” Hawk grinned. “We fold space.”

“ _We_ ,” echoed Indie, the humor in her mechanical voice again unmistakable to Hawk.

“It’s a less well-known way of travel,” Hawk finished he explanation. “A little tricky. But convenient.”

“I heard of it in my education-virtuals,” said Sienna. “But I thought it was theoretical.”

“To Consortium Research, certainly. But not to everyone in the universe.”

“Wow.” She looked around. “So why can’t you just fold all the way to Titan Station?”

“Because it requires resources and energy and careful trajectory planning. And I’m not all that experienced at it, so I’d rather not slam us into Jupiter.” She laughed at S’enna's horrified look. “I don’t think that’s _likely_. In fact, I’m not even certain it’s possible to fold an area of space containing Jupiter. It’s a rather large body. But still, safer to fold smaller bits. Besides, now we’re out of immediate danger, so we can try contacting your mom again. With a little luck, we’ll reach them by radio before we reach them in person.”

Sienna sighed. “And you’re sure we’ll be there in time?”

“Barring other unforeseen problems.” Hawk didn’t have the heart to say that there were always unforeseen problems.

Sienna relaxed. Then, she undid her safety belt and stood, stretching.

“So I’m stuck with you for eight days? What do you do with yourself alone in this ship, anyway?”

“Contemplate the mysteries of the universe,” said Hawk. “Usually in silence. And I’m not alone.”

Sienna jerked, as though expecting a shock. “Sorry, ship.”

“ _Apology accepted_.”

“However,” Hawk went on, “we have a much more exciting occupation for the duration of our trip.”

She picked up the data crystal, staring into its cloudy depths.

“Saving the periphery stations is step one. If the Consortium is right about the invasion, that still leaves us with the main problem: namely, saving the rest of the system.” She glanced up, meeting Sienna’s surprised gaze. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

The girl was starting to look horrified again. “I didn’t think of that. There’s nothing to stop that invasion fleet from blowing up the periphery stations, anyway.”

“Well. That would depend on who they are, and what they want from this solar system. I don’t suppose you heard anything about that.”

Sienna shook her head. “Dad didn’t discuss who the invaders were. Only how to stop them from reaching the central planets.”

Hawk rolled her eyes. _Central_. Only the Earth-born would call their little watery rock that.

She sighed and returned her attention to the data crystal.

She wouldn’t admit this to the panicky teenager, but she had a pretty good idea who the invading fleet were. And what they wanted.

Which meant that saving the rest of the solar system was really only step two.

The main problem was figuring out how to save herself.

“ _Warning_ ,” said Indie. “ _Pirate vessels detected on long-range sensors.”_

Hawk rolled her eyes.

“This is going to be one of those days,” she grumbled, and she turned the pilot chair to face the main console again. “Strap yourself in, kid. I told you it’s a bumpy ride.”

THE END


End file.
